Following a meeting of Hutton Henry parish council in July, and on the back of a number of queries from residents throughout our county division, me and Lynn have again contacted the public transport department at county hall to express our concerns about the impact on our communities of reduced and withdrawn bus services.
We are keen to secure the best outcome possible for our residents and we think that the best way to do this is to continue to negotiate with the relevant agencies. Clearly we are better armed with your comments, queries and suggestions so please contact us if you have anything you would like us to know about the withdrawal of services in the Blackhalls area, particularly issues about the impact on communities of service reductions.
To avoid confusion, we have copied in full the response we received from the transport section at DCC:
The 206 service, operated by Go North East, runs from Peterlee via Blackhall, Hesleden and Castle Eden, terminating in an anticlockwise loop Fir Tree - Wingate - Station Town -
Hutton Henry; then continuing via the A19 to Wellfield interchange and
continuing via Castle Eden etc back to Peterlee.
Go North East formerly ran the entire service under a contract with DCC. From
the retendering of the bus service contracts in the area last year, they took
on the main part of the service on a commercial (unsubsidised) basis, although
the timetable was to be unchanged. They took on several other other local
services in the Peterlee area in the same way.
However, after GoNE had submitted their tender, the situation has been
materially affected by Arriva's revamp of their own commercial services in the
area, which took effect at the same date as the change in the contracts. Arriva
increased the frequency and effectiveness of their services in several areas,
including the Wingate/Station - Peterlee corridor (where Arriva's frequency has
increased from 1 to 2 per hour) and between Peterlee and Blackhall (where
Arriva has increased their services from 3 to 4 per hour).
While Arriva's changes have been good for some people (for example people
travelling Station Town / Wingate - Peterlee), the impact has been that the
revenue taken by the GoNE local services has been reduced materially,
especially in the case of service 206. The majority of the revenue of service
206 was from people travelling between Peterlee and Blackhall, and between
Peterlee and Wingate, and in both sections Arriva has taken many of the
passengers. The places that are uniquely served by service 206 (Hesleden, Castle
Eden and Hutton Henry) are quite small and typically there are only a small
number of passengers on each bus to/from these places. This means the
overall revenue generated from passengers has proved insufficient to make the
originally intended timetable viable. A reduced timetable was therefore
introduced by Go North East with effect from 24th March 2013. Local services
between Peterlee and Easington Colliery and Peterlee and Horden were also
reduced at the same date, for similar reasons.
GoNE's decision that they could not sustain the whole original timetable
emerged at quite short notice. While the reduced service does provide for most
key needs, we do need to review the situation to see whether there is scope to
do better. (eg - it would be better if there was a journey from Peterlee at
about 0915 to provide a better timed morning journey for shoppers etc.)
Now that the role being performed by the service is focussed on the needs in
the section between Wingate, Hutton Henry, Castle Eden, Hesleden and Blackhall
it may be that a more "micro-bus" type of service would be more
appropriate, rather than the "mainstream" sort of service that GoNE
provides - although in all of this the key constraint is that DCC has to work
within the current funding provison for subsiding socially necessary services.
We obviously need to hear the views and preferences of users of the service and
it would be very helpful to learn any specific issues that are raised through
the parish council.
I will be back in touch with you and the the other local councillors once we
have been able to do more investigations. In the meantime, do get in touch if
you have any queries or if I can be of any further assistance.